Services which are currently provided by a variety of technologies and methods for the use of apartment managers, residents and visitors of a building include building access control, intra-building communications, entrance paging, safety monitoring, security monitoring, interactive control and local or remote alarm monitoring.
Current systems for servicing buildings include a building security system such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,937,855 issued to McNab et al. which utilizes a central computer or CPU in a common control card. All subscribers must access the common control card in order to communicate with a visitor. Thus, only one subscriber at a time can interface with the common control card. Moreover, a visitor call causes interruption of normal ongoing telephone service including data transmissions associated with facsimile messages and tele-software delivery services. In the event a building has more than one visitor entrance panel, such systems are capable of completing only one transaction at a time. Another shortcoming of the McNab system is that the application software contained within the equipment memory is not remotely programmable. Yet another feature that is absent is the failure of equipment modules to be self-diagnosing and reporting. In addition, transaction records of visitor/resident access requests and transactions are not recorded. The absence of discrimination between voice and data in McNab results in data transmissions when in progress being interrupted by a visitor call at the entrance panel.
There is no known system which integrates all of the above-mentioned services which are currently provided on a fragmented basis. Nor can any such system overcome all of the above-mentioned shortcomings of current equipment.